Anxiety

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  So I spent most of my afternoons with Henry. For hours, I would listen to him dreaming about wealth in Argentina and the wonderful life out in the open, on horseback, in boots and sombreros. I did not argue about the war any more. He had included it in his plans, which became more complex. First, we would go to England and join the British forces which were less difficult than the French. He had found out that British R.A.F. pilots were being trained in America. We might do a little fighting, to satisfy me. Afterwards, as the war drew to a close, we could get ourselves demobilized in America. From there, we could get to Argentina. Once again, I was exhausted by the effort to escape from myself. The usual cycle was completed and I was incapable of taking an interest in the world or of coming to a decision. To me, the war was far off and of no importance. I listened to Henry as he spoke with precision and conviction. I knew too well how deceptively rational and clear his dreams could seem. Anyone else, seeing us there, with me so attentive and him so bright-eyed and talkative, would never have guessed that he was only daydreaming. I borrowed some books from the public library and tried to do some studying again. It was my old means of protection against the world and against myself, in fact against anything that happened. At this time the temporary Algiers government announced by proclamation that we were reinstated in the university and that exams were to be held within two months. This forced my decision: perhaps it was wiser to continue my studies and become a professor of philosophy, as I had always so much wanted, and to bother less about others. Unfortunately, this time the way back was full of pitfalls. If I wished and, indeed, was forced to break with the West, could I peacefully keep its values and philosophy and become one of its officials? Actually, I got caught up once more in the fever of preparing for the exams and avoided my self- questioning. But I soon realized how impossible it all was. ~ 7. EXAMINATION ~ I have now come to the point where I began my narrative. Here I am in the examination hall, in the huge university library. All around me, as far as the distant shelves on the walls, my comrades are feverishly at work. The early morning sun begins to warm us through the stained glass. The first beads of sweat are tickling my forehead and forming heavy drops in my eyebrows.

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  Today, without any useless pride, I can really admit that I have sometimes regretted not having studied medicine. I chose, instead, this terrifying and exhausting search for one’s real identity that philosophy implies, and also the ceaseless attempt to master the universe that is the writer’s fate. But are these preferable, I mean this proud choice, the constant anxiety, the look in one’s eyes that is always restless, are these better than stability, security, no matter how mediocre? I might even have forgotten philosophy and remembered it only as a boyhood love, nostalgic and yet ridiculous. As a physician, however, I would have preserved the somewhat simple complacency and intellectual security and pride of one of those petty-bourgeois representatives of culture. On that day, however, when Monsieur Bismuth informed me that he was withdrawing his financial support, I saw it as but one more obstacle to surmount. I no longer had anybody on whom I could rely. This was one more rope that had once guaranteed my security and that had now broken and failed me. I was not afraid, I only felt that it would mean all the more glory if I made a success of my life, battling my way ahead by the sheer strength of my own wrists. I contemplated myself with some emotion and self-complacency: Alexandre Benillouche, professor of philosophy! To me, it seemed prodigious, so full of promise. For this wonderful goal remained, after all, only one of many stages on my way. As a physician, I had no chance of fame; nor could I have remained content with a profession that clearly imposed on me such intolerable limitations. As a philosopher and writer, I would be able to taste every experience and seize at every kind of glory. At that time, I never stopped to count the cost, in blood and sweat, of these experiences, nor had it yet occurred to me that, without assistance, without advice, above all spending my gifts profusely, I might collapse out of sheer exhaustion.

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  To me, such promiscuity was repulsive; besides, what had I to tell? Nevertheless, shy though I was, I was forced to admit that my sexual and general isolation were becoming unbearable and that my secret demanded to be shared with another. The narrow alleys of the red-light district bordered immediately on the open ghetto and nothing particular distinguished them from other streets. Impatient men waited at the little doors of the cells only ten yards away from the ragged children playing marbles in the cracks in the uneven pavement. The first shops on these streets were still occupied by second-hand dealers. The topography of the place suited me perfectly, for I could wander around as though I were passing there by accident or looking for something. But I could not prevent myself from walking too fast and too stiffly, with a false air of preoccupation. My quick searching glances into the main street, vaulted like a covered bazaar, never went beyond the dealers, and I avoided their eyes and those of passers-by as though I would find in them some sort of ironical accusation; so I hurried past. But even if I were to cross into the zone of public shame, how could I ever accost the women I saw there, sitting on their doorsteps? That seemed an insurmountable trial. And there was another frightening obstacle. I knew, from having often heard our school supervisors say so, that one should never go there without a condom. I had already seen comrades of mine, pale and proud, with rings around their eyes and an awkward gait, announce with affected nonchalance that they had caught gonorrhea, as though that were a proof of their virility. The others, who knew most of the prostitutes by name, would nod knowingly. “Never go to Lola without a condom. Fontana caught this from her.” I listened with intense curiosity, also with some anxiety and an affectation of indifference. As virginity was considered a joke, I had to avoid being suspected of it, so I discouraged their jokes by pretending to be as calm as an old roué. But how could I possibly walk into a drugstore and, in a loud voice, in front of everybody, perhaps even women, ask for a rubber? I might just as well announce solemnly to all and sundry: “I’m on my way to a brothel.” So I would walk up and down in front of a store until the druggist’s worried attention was attracted, and then I would flee down the street while he stared suspiciously after me.

• From Henry and June (1986)

  He talks to ease Hugo’s burning jealousy, perhaps to ease his own doubts. His passion is protective, compassionate, so he underlines my frailty, my naïveté; whereas I, with a deeper instinct, choose a man who compels my strength, who makes enormous demands on me, who does not doubt my courage or my toughness, who does not believe me naïve or innocent, who has the courage to treat me like a woman. June Arrived Last Night. Fred telephoned the news. I was stunned, although I had so often imagined the scene. I have been aware all day that June is in Clichy. I choke over work and food, remembering Henry’s pleading words: to wait. But the period of waiting is unbearable. I swallow large doses of sleeping medicine. I jump when the telephone rings. I call up Allendy. I’m like a person drowning. Henry telephoned me yesterday and again today, grave, bewildered. “June has come in a decent mood. She is subdued and reasonable.” He is disarmed. Will this last? How long will June stay? What must I do? I cannot wait, here, in this room, face to face with my work. I go to sleep with pain oppressing me. When I awake in the morning, it lies at the back of my head like a stone. Hugo’s love, at this moment, is tremendous, superhuman. And Allendy’s. They are fighting for me. I almost died, as a child, to win my father’s love, and I let myself die psychically for the same reason, to torment and tyrannize those I love, to obtain their care. This realization has whipped me. I am fighting now to help myself. I should not give up Henry simply because June is reasonable. Yet I must give him up temporarily, and to do this I must fill the immense vacancy his absence creates in my life. June telephoned me, and I felt no pang at the sound of her voice, no bliss, none of the excitement I expected to feel. She is coming to Louveciennes tomorrow night.

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  The musicians also seemed to shake their limbs like snorting horses, laughing among themselves with all their teeth showing white and yellow in their black faces. One could hear their guttural voices against a background of shrill gossip. The drummer heated and gently beat above the fire the skin of his instrument, the cymbal-player checked the leather thongs that bound the metal to his hands. Then, like flames, the red scarves were handed above the heads of the crowd, from woman to woman, to the heart of this gay, happy, and relaxed gathering, where my mother, still in her seizure, still lay on the floor, all by herself, in the indifferent gathering of her sisters and of all these other women. When at last the cock was brought in and the musicians got ready to start again, I had to admit that I was entirely helpless and took to flight. I ran down the stairs, rudely pushed aside anyone who was in my way, and was out of the house before the music had started again. In the cool evening air I shivered and then noticed for the first time that I was in a sweat. Unconsciously, I thought of going back, to avoid catching cold: this too had been taught me since childhood, not to leave a warm room without first drinking a glass of water, then to go out by degrees, breathing the colder air in small doses. But I no longer wanted to do anything that I had been taught to do. From now on, I’ll stare straight at the moon, though I’ve been taught that it may strike one blind; when I cut my nails, I’ll throw the parings away anywhere, without fearing that I’ll have to return every night, after my death, in order to find them, by the light of my own ten fingers flaming like torches, throughout all the dust and mud of the whole world; and I’ll no longer whisper to the Djnoun spirits, before throwing out water: “Excuse me, please excuse me!” So I rushed out of our Passage with my teeth already chattering from the drafts of the windy street. I walked fast to keep warm, and the exercise reduced my anxiety, which at the same time depressed me. Once more I felt that my revolt against all this was useless and made no sense. With whom was I really annoyed? Avoiding the well-lit streets, I reached Henry’s house. His window was still open and the light that shone out of his room pierced a hole in the darkness of the park.

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  As I could not undertake the religious part, rather because of my ignorance than of any scruple, I found an assistant capable of saying the prayers — they were all capable of this — and kept for myself the sermon, which mattered more to me. It worried me to have to trick my own people like the enemy. But if religion could help me save these men and give them a collective consciousness which would keep them sane, I would use their religion. They did not, however, all have confidence in me, and the more suspicious were among the most faithful. Some welcomed the idea of keeping up religious education, others demanded a rabbi. On Wednesdays and Thursdays the coming ceremony was the center of discussion, and often silence fell as I approached. To add to the solemnity of the occasion, I induced the kitchens, which were supplied by the community, to make a special effort. I prepared my program with great care. The rest was a question of propaganda, and in this I was greatly helped by the scouts and a few men who had understood my ultimate aim. On Friday evenings when they returned from work, several of the workers would go to the stream, in spite of the cold, to take an extra wash. They put on their least tattered clothes and slowly came back to the middle of the camp. I too had dressed up and awaited them with a few determined helpers, the group captains, and the scouts. We had agreed to stay at equal distances from each other and to form a circle. The men hesitated as they approached, argued among themselves and, in their minds, drew an imaginary circumference. At last they were all still. The moment I was about to open my mouth, a difficulty I had neglected occurred to me: although I had prepared my subject and even words which would be understood without awakening the suspicions of the guards who were looking on, I realized only now that I should speak in dialect. I think in French, and my interior monologues had for a long time been in French. When it happens that I speak to myself in dialect, I always have the strange impression, not so much of using a foreign language, as of hearing an obscure and obsolete part of myself, so forgotten that it is no longer native to me. I do not feel this strangeness when speaking to others, it is rather like playing on a musical instrument. But I did not know enough words of Judeo- Arabic to convey my whole meaning to them.

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  I couldn’t yet afford an overcoat every year as I could a new suit or a new pair of shoes, so I simply had to go without an overcoat on special occasions like this one. When I reached my destination, I found the downstairs lobby in our host’s house completely dark. I fumbled a while along the walls, trying to find the light switch, but soon had to give up. So I went ahead in the darkness, hoping to be able to guide myself by the streaks of light that appeared beneath the doors or the light of the glass roof above the stairwell. But the passage soon followed a bend and I then found myself in absolutely unmitigated darkness, as if I had closed my eyes. I was shortsighted by nature and had developed a kind of carelessness about looking, often trusting to my sense of touch. So I now tried to find the wall, then clung to it with one hand, and began to go ahead, for a while, hesitant and full of misgivings, until my hand felt a curve. I followed it and finally reached what I supposed to be a stair rail: I was saved! One step at a time, I then began to climb, being careful to feel my way at the edge of each step with the tip of my toes, as a precaution. But it all took a long time. I followed a first turn, then a second one, till my shoe at last met nothing ahead of it and came down again unpleasantly to the same level. I then guessed I had reached the first floor, but Michel lived on the second, so I followed the stair rail, without letting go of it, all the way round the landing until my foot bumped again against a step, the first one of the second flight of stairs, after which I began to go up. I was still in total darkness, as if I were buried in the heart of something solid and opaque. Nowhere did my eyes detect any light that could guide me at all. Again, I was able to conclude, from the way my foot had fallen a second time without having met a step, that I had reached another landing, the second floor. The stair rail was really an excellent guide in my ascension, though no longer of much use to me. I figured out that I should try to reach the wall opposite the stair rail and follow it, which would inevitably lead me to a door. So I regained some of my assurance, especially when my hand found its way quite easily to the wall and I was then able to move ahead towards the left, however slowly. Following the stone wall, I then turned a first time, then a second, in gentle curves. How odd that there should not yet be any doors!

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  Hoping to catch a breath of air, I had opened the door and all the windows of the study hall. The deserted high school was suffocating, paralyzed by the motionless June heat. Blinding white light gushed in from everywhere like a motionless whirlwind, poured through the torn canvas shades with every thread now stiff and dry. Yellow, red, and green flashed from the pages of my book and tortured my tired eyes. I was waiting for the results of the written examinations and every hour was an agonizing battle against the heat and the heaviness of my head. Since the candidates had now been granted the exceptional privilege of using the study hall, I had fled from the gossip of my family at home to spend all my spare time in the school building. From the other end of the long corridor, I heard the approach of soldierly footsteps resounding in the hot air and easily identified as those of Monsieur Creschi, the Corsican janitor who had once been a top sergeant in the colonial infantry. His approach seemed interminable, till suddenly he appeared in the doorway, a silhouette haloed by a blaze of light. A little boy was waiting for me in the lobby, he said. A little boy? I was in too deep a torpor to feel any curiosity. To hell with all little boys! I could hardly hear Monsieur Creschi, who panted, groaned, and patted his damp forehead. Regretfully, I stood up and pulled the back of my wet and sticky shirt, soaking with sweat, away from my skin. I found my youngest brother, Birou, in the lobby. He was upset and full of the importance of his errand: Uncle Joseph was dead, my mother wanted me home at once, my father was waiting for me. Birou’s excitement amused me. “Do you know Uncle Joseph?” I asked invidiously. “Oh, yes!” he said. “I saw him at cousin Louisa’s wedding.” “What was he like?” “He’s big and strong. He’s nice and has a mustache.” “You’re mixing him up with Uncle Binhas. Uncle Joseph is the oldest, the one who sells shoes. Besides, he’s not big, he’s small.” “Oh, I thought the big one was the oldest. So he’s not dead.” Although we lived in the same city, we seldom had any contact with my father’s family. I saw Uncle Joseph no more than once or twice a year. To assert a difference from the rest of the tribe in the Passage, my father was always proclaiming the dignity of the Benillouche family and the reserved but real tenderness they felt for each other. This was partly true; but he had actually cut himself off from his own family when he had married my mother, a pretty girl from a humble background. Still, catastrophes and rare occasions of great joy brought the Benillouche clan together again and made them aware of their unity.

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  He was in the middle of his dream and could not free himself so easily from it. He thought I was alluding to the dangers of the sea voyage. “The Germans are finished in the Mediterranean.” “That’s not what I mean. Can we really stay out of this war?” He exploded. “So you think we haven’t paid a high enough price already? The truth is that you are speaking for yourself and that you are terrified of being accused of fright. Besides, damn it, first of all they should want to have us. They don’t want our help because they don’t want to grant us our rights. Our dignity now requires that we all volunteer together; if they want us, they must take the lot of us.” Unfortunately, it was too late for anything but individual solutions. The French were now sure of victory and refused to make any postwar promises, so the traumatized Jewish masses withdrew to themselves again. But I could not hope for any peace without having first tried everything. Why has nothing ever been simple for me? I envied any young Frenchman who had just received his orders to join the army. If he delayed answering the call, the military police came and fetched him. My ex-comrades in the camps had a freer conscience. They felt that they paid their tribute to a war in which they did not believe and which would change nothing for them. I alone had no idea what to do because I was too free, with the too perfect freedom of a seed which seeks a place to settle. Freedom is one aspect of solitude, and my solitude was too painful for me to enjoy the full weight of my freedom. The rumor got around, however, that the Free French Forces were more liberal than the regular army which accepted only conscripts. When the Gaullists opened their first recruiting office in a tailor’s shop, I went there with Henry, who was sarcastic but always willing to follow me. A Free French lieutenant with a blue cap and red lapels awaited his clients behind a huge counter. He rose exuberantly: “So you want to fight?” “Yes,” I said. He pointed to an open register which was the only object on the counter and, indeed, in the shop. “Here, fill in your name, address, age...” It was still the first page, almost blank: I counted three names. The lieutenant followed my eyes. “It’s true, your compatriots don’t seem very enthusiastic,” he said cheerfully. Henry and I looked at each other. It would take too long and be too difficult to explain, and it might hurt his feelings. Why should they be enthusiastic? What had they to defend or to hope for? I did not answer. Jumping from column to column, I carefully wrote down my name, address, age, nationality, and profession. The last column was headed: “Reasons for which you are not already in the army.”

• From Henry and June (1986)

  I gave him the one thing June cannot give him: honesty. I am so ready to admit what a supremely developed ego would not admit: that June is a terrifying and inspiring character who makes every other woman insipid, that I would live her life except for my compassion and my conscience, that she may destroy Henry the man, but Henry the writer is more enriched by ordeals than by peace. I, on the other hand, cannot destroy Hugo, because he has nothing else. But like June, I have a capacity for delicate perversions. The love of only one man or one woman is an enclosure. My conflict is going to be greater than June’s, because she has no mind watching her life. Others do it for her, and she denies all they say or write. I have a mind which is bigger than all the rest of me, an inexorable conscience. Eduardo says, “Go and be psychoanalyzed.” But that seems too simple. I want to make my own discoveries. I do not need drugs, artificial stimulation. Yet I want to experience those very things with June, to penetrate the evil which attracts me. I seek life, and the experiences I want are denied me because I carry in me a force which neutralizes them. I meet June, the near-prostitute, and she becomes pure. A purity which maddens Henry, a purity of face and being which is awesome, just as I saw her one afternoon in the corner of the divan, transparent, supernatural. Henry speaks to me of her extreme vulgarity. I know her lack of pride. Vulgarity gives the joy of desecrating. But June is not a demon. Life is the demon, possessing her, and their coition is violent because her voraciousness for life is enormous, a tasting of its bitterest flavors. After Henry’s visit I began to tiger-pace the house and to say to Hugo I had to go away. There were outcries. “You are not really sick—just tired.” But Hugo, as usual, understood, consented. The house suffocated me. I couldn’t see people, I couldn’t write, I couldn’t rest either. Sunday Hugo took me out for a walk. We found some very large, deep rabbit holes. He playfully incited our dog Banquo to stick his nose in them, to dig. I felt a terrifying oppression, as if I had crawled into a hole and were stifling. I remembered many dreams I have had of being forced to crawl on my stomach, like a snake, through tunnels and apertures that were too small for me, the last one always smaller than all the others, where the anxiety grew so strong that it awakened me. I stood before the rabbit hole and shouted angrily at Hugo to stop. My anger baffled him. It was only a game, and with the dog. Now that the feeling of suffocation was so crystallized, I was determined to go away. At night, in Hugo’s arms, my decision wavered.

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  But I felt that such a gulf separated us Jewish boys from our Moslem classmates and that the impetus that bore me toward the West was so strong that these encounters could be but accidents. I believed, firmly but not very clearly, that our future lay with Europe. Two inconceivable acts of treachery on the part of the West were necessary before I ceased to associate my life too closely with it. By then, however, I had already broken with the East too. Life in school slowly taught me my exact position, making the picture clearer each year. Our Alsatian teacher was an example of ordinary anti-Semitism arising from incompatibility. As a man of the North, he disliked living on the Mediterranean, and he reproached us with liking all the things he detested, such as speaking loud, or living on the streets, or being sunburnt, whereas his complexion was milky-white. Then there was the traditional and stupid race prejudice of Naud, the retired lieutenant with the missing leg who taught us history. Another historian also tried to give race prejudice a scientific basis. What complexes drove him to devote his doctrinal dissertation and many years of his life to nonsensical gossip? He forced himself to demonstrate his theories calmly, without ever raising his voice. Years later, he was to betray his secret violence when, with unexpected audacity in such a silent man, soft and almost an invalid, he became a leader in Franco-Nazi collaboration. But his classes were carefully prepared and intelligent, so that they did me more harm than any stupid or aggressive jokes. I respected all that seemed scientifically accurate, and because I found no immediate reply to his arguments, they troubled me and made me feel guilty. To combat this, I threw myself into studies of Judaism and became intellectually aware of our own Hebrew spiritual tradition. For a few years I enthusiastically attended any lecture or meeting which could help me in these investigations; then firmly entrenched within my new knowledge, I tried to undermine as best I could the teachings of this doctrinaire racial theorist in the minds of my school-fellows. But they all laughed at my discoveries, much as they also derided what our teacher said. So I resorted to my usual vengeance. As he had at least the tact to allow us to express contrary views, whether he liked it or not, I was his best pupil, and I remember well writing angry sixteen-page compositions for him. But this was impossible with Murat, whom we nicknamed the sprinkler because he constantly spat as he spoke.

• From The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma (2014)

  In another pattern, called “anxious” or “ambivalent” attachment, the infants constantly draw attention to themselves by crying, yelling, clinging, or screaming: They are “feeling but not dealing.”[13] They seem to have concluded that unless they make a spectacle, nobody is going to pay attention to them. They become enormously upset when they do not know where their mother is but derive little comfort from her return. And even though they don’t seem to enjoy her company, they stay passively or angrily focused on her, even in situations when other children would rather play.[14] Attachment researchers think that the three “organized” attachment strategies (secure, avoidant, and anxious) work because they elicit the best care a particular caregiver is capable of providing. Infants who encounter a consistent pattern of care—even if it’s marked by emotional distance or insensitivity—can adapt to maintain the relationship. That does not mean that there are no problems: Attachment patterns often persist into adulthood. Anxious toddlers tend to grow into anxious adults, while avoidant toddlers are likely to become adults who are out of touch with their own feelings and those of others. (As in, “There’s nothing wrong with a good spanking. I got hit and it made me the success I am today.”) In school avoidant children are likely to bully other kids, while the anxious children are often their victims.[15] However, development is not linear, and many life experiences can intervene to change these outcomes. But there is another group that is less stably adapted, a group that makes up the bulk of the children we treat and a substantial proportion of the adults who are seen in psychiatric clinics. Some twenty years ago, Mary Main and her colleagues at Berkeley began to identify a group of children (about 15 percent of those they studied) who seemed to be unable to figure out how to engage with their caregivers. The critical issue turned out to be that the caregivers themselves were a source of distress or terror to the children.[16] Children in this situation have no one to turn to, and they are faced with an unsolvable dilemma; their mothers are simultaneously necessary for survival and a source of fear.[17] They “can neither approach (the secure and ambivalent ‘strategies’), shift [their] attention (the avoidant ‘strategy’), nor flee.”[18] If you observe such children in a nursery school or attachment laboratory, you see them look toward their parents when they enter the room and then quickly turn away. Unable to choose between seeking closeness and avoiding the parent, they may rock on their hands and knees, appear to go into a trance, freeze with their arms raised, or get up to greet their parent and then fall to the ground. Not knowing who is safe or whom they belong to, they may be intensely affectionate with strangers or may trust nobody. Main called this pattern “disorganized attachment.” Disorganized attachment is “fright without solution.”[19]

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  Marrou knew Poinsot well and often spoke to me of him. He envied Poinsot’s ability to live at ease under any sky, to hate nothing and to bear everything with ease. As soon as his first volume of verse had been greeted with some praise by Paris critics, Marrou had decided to go and live in the capital. But there, he was soon homesick for the Mediterranean and he returned to Tunis six months later. He understood that his own instability and Poinsot’s total ease were the ineradicable marks of two entirely different situations, each one complete in itself. Poinsot’s mere presence had a liberating effect on me, while Marrou made no attempt to help me. On the contrary, he openly doubted the outcome of his own situation and cultivated in me an anxiety akin to his own. At that time I had no clear notion of what these two men actually meant to me. Once in a while, a sign, a mere comparison, gave me a foreboding of it. I had long felt, for instance, a strange desire to bring Poinsot home to meet my family. Unconsciously, I wanted to make him face the facts of my life, to make him see and feel my study table in the midst of all the furnishings of our home, my few books, my couple of shelves of plain wood, roughly carpentered and painted, held to the wall by heavy iron hooks placed in badly fixed brackets. I had not been able to see him, one day, at noon; so I waited to join him after the late afternoon classes. The afternoon had been surly, and the sky was like a blanket, weighing heavily on the damp air. When he saw me turn up, as always, little Poinsot beckoned gently. He was very absent-minded and always allowed me to decide on our itinerary, following me without making a remark on the way I chose to go. On an impulse, I decided this time to take a short cut, going by our Passage, though I still had no idea how I would be able to prevail on him to enter our home. We had barely left the middle-class downtown area when it began to rain, a sudden shower with drops as big as peanuts. The crowds scattered like a flock of sparrows; in an instant, the street was deserted. I grabbed Poinsot by the sleeve and forced him to hurry. “We’re not very far from my home,” I shouted to him in the hurried tattoo of the rain splashing on the ground. “If you’d like, we can find shelter there...”

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  I did not tell my parents of my condition, for they would have lost their heads and worried me without being able to help. I preferred to keep it to myself. Maybe this was motivated as much by shyness as by the futility of telling anyone. Why should I admit that my health was wrecked? But perhaps my reserve was not so pure. Without admitting it to myself, I was giving in to one of the ridiculous prejudices of my education: tuberculosis, the “bad disease,” was considered shameful. I could not ask to have more to eat without depriving others. But I could rest, physically at least. This was possible as long as I did not have to run to the trenches and climb stairs twenty times a day. With the excuse that I was exhausted from camp life, I managed to be left in peace in my bedroom with the door shut. All day I dozed on a sofa, my cheeks feverish. For the first time in my life, I had nothing to do. My only occupation was to take my temperature three times a day, and sometimes more, out of curiosity or anxiety. When I had taken it once I took it again, with the excuse that I had to check it because I had been too impatient or had taken it too soon. In spite of my refusal to take myself seriously, I was in fact far more worried than I admitted, and the rhythm of my daily life was determined by the thermometer. I tried to work in spite of the doctor’s advice, but within a few minutes, my eyes would burn, my head grew heavy, and I would feel exhausted. I had always worked too much, but I now knew that it would be unbearable if I were not able to. I could no longer think of anything but myself and the balance-sheet of my life that I was now forced to examine. In the past, some urgent task had fortunately always required attention, and I had only stopped once in a while to ponder the meaning of my life. But I was now locked up with myself by war and sickness, with no possible diversion. The worst part of being sick, I found, was this concentration on one’s self and the tyranny of the self. Perhaps others who live more extrovertedly find this profitable. But for those who tend to be introspective, sickness is stark solitude, the worst of all possible conditions.

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  A spanking delivered with the hard and horny hand of my father, or even a whipping, with his belt, on the soles of my feet. I would then have howled, swallowed my tears for a good quarter of an hour, and been able to publicize my suffering; after which my conscience would have been appeased and I would have played out of doors until I had forgotten my crime. Instead, a vague anxiety already began to pervade me when my mother refused me the privilege, granted to me twice a week, of awaiting her return from the market at the opening of Tarfoune Street. As soon as we saw her, we always rushed toward her from there and seized her heavy basket that my sister and I would then drag as far as our kitchen. Seated side by side on the brick-red tiled floor that was never cold, we played a wonderful game of fishing in it, punctuating our fun with loud cries of joy. Mother always left us in peace, our excuse being that we put the vegetables away in the kitchen closet and the fruit in the room. We always put all the yellow lemons together, so vividly bright and rich in aroma that I never wearied of breathing their scent deep in my lungs, as if I wanted to absorb their contents through my sense of smell, and then the eggplants, dark purple with mysterious lighter spots that turned to red, the tender green artichokes that seemed to paraffin the whole mouth and to coat the palate with rubber, lastly the heavy watermelon that was so heavy we had to roll it along the floor to the room. Each time we discovered a little surprise, some peanut butter, a piece of halva, a sesame cake. But we always tasted everything: a fresh mouthful of fennel, a lick of sugar, a bite into a carrot. Mother knew our joy and didn’t constrain it with useless nagging. To prevent any damage was her only concern: “Be careful with the eggs! Don’t get all dirty from the fish!” On this particular morning that I remember so bitterly, she wouldn’t let us take hold of her basket. I knew the meaning of her tight lips. Her fine Berber face was drawn taut over the jaws and the hard peaks of her cheekbones. A painful anxiety began to pervade me, all the more disturbing because its cause was unknown.

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  For several weeks I had not been able to make entries in my diary. I now returned to my scrupulous and methodical habits, but my point of view had changed. Before, it had been metaphysical and impersonal, scrutinizing the world passionately to understand it. Now I became the only center of my own preoccupations. Who was I? What were the results of my long struggle ever since my childhood? In the confusion of my buzzing ears and burning cheeks and feverish brain, I was certain only of the need to come to a conclusion. Would I have the courage to go on living in so unstable an equilibrium? But once more my balance-sheet was almost forgotten. The collapse of the Germans was as sudden as the arrival of their Junker transports full of troops had been, at least to me. One afternoon, probably at about five, I had just taken my temperature when shots rang out in the streets. As we always expected the worst, we started to put up barricades, before we caught sight of the first American tanks. For several days we gave ourselves up to delirious joy. Miraculously, our anxiety was gone, and here again were freedom and abundance. The German planes soon disappeared and our nights ceased to be nightmares, we devoured endless cans of meat, and spoke loudly in the streets to relieve ourselves. It was more than peace: it was a party. Then we had to start everyday life again. I realized that the historical change in our situation required a new kind of behavior. (But I wonder whether the gravest problems are not less painful than having to face one’s own self.)

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  This allowed them somehow to continue their childish games they had learned as scouts, and they still practiced their scout cries, imitating toads or cocks and calling each other by animal names and still reading pathfinder literature. But I never managed to be able to laugh at their constant jokes and puns and witticisms, though they were very sharp at seeing the funny side of things and of people. The world had been theirs from the day of their birth, much to their satisfaction. As for me, I felt that everything was still to be conquered and the struggle ahead of me gave me no reason to laugh. Besides, I hated everything funny. The instruction in Hebrew and in Jewish social matters that they had asked me to organize for them had its place, in their scheme of things, alongside courses on how to tie knots in ropes. This gave me an additional reason to despise them. But I was all the more anxious to approach them because they refused to consider me as one of their crowd, and I was really quite gratified when Henry transmitted to me their first invitation. They were planning a reception in honor of their national chief, who was coming to Tunis from Paris. The party was to take place in the home of Michel, the son of a lawyer who had agreed to evacuate the apartment, with all the rest of his family, to allow the reception more freedom. On the appointed evening, I demanded of my mother that she supply me with a spotlessly white shirt, a symbol of all that is both solemn and clean. I made her iron it a second time beneath my very eyes as all our linen, crowded in drawers that were too full, always had a crumpled appearance. Before dressing, I put brilliantine on my hair but was then obliged to clean it off with a rag, a tuft of hair at a time, because I had put too much on. As always when the occasion warranted, I wore my sweater beneath my shirt, under the impression that a shirt front looked more dressy. Besides, none of my sweaters really matched my suit, so I had no real choice. Finally, I turned my overcoat inside out and folded it over my arm: it was too worn for me to be able to think of wearing it.

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  In a clear voice, perhaps slightly histrionic, or at any rate so it seemed to me, he asked for a prophylactic — surely it was not necessary to speak so loud. I watched the druggist, small and bald and drowned in a great white overall, with his face hidden behind the thick lenses of his spectacles; but he didn’t even look up, handed the little package at arm’s length, and vanished behind the cash desk which rang a bell. Until we got to the labyrinth that led to the red-light district, we spoke of all sorts of other things while my heart thumped away. By the time we reached the first shop under the old green vault and crossed this passage beyond which I had never dared venture by myself, my heart beat so hard that I could no longer hear what Bissor was still saying in the same tone of voice. At the other end of the tunnel-like passage, I could see the women standing in their doorways. Bissor slowed down and walked nonchalantly, still talking as we approached, with me close to him like an animal, silent and distracted by the emotion in my dry throat. I looked straight ahead, like a horse with blinkers, and passed among all the women whose presence I merely guessed. But soon I felt all the promises held in the scattered crowd around me. The little cells were close by each other and seemed no wider than their doors; in very little space, there seemed to be lots of women. Some were Europeans in shorts and blouses, of all ages, of all nationalities, of all colors, with their hair bound up. There were blondes — whether real or not, I could not tell — and Sicilian brunettes in bathrobes cut out of blankets; Spanish women who stressed their type by displaying the appropriate high combs, black shawls, and beauty spots; Moslems and Jewesses with flowers behind their ears, shaven eyebrows replaced by thick streams of black makeup, and even some Negresses with wiry hair and scarlet or bright blue petticoats. I no longer knew where to look. I was stunned by so much opulence and upset by all this offered flesh which I could see and even touch if I wished or dared. After all, my wildest dreams had never gone beyond trying to give shape to vague memories of a street encounter or to give life to an illustration. I was frightened now at having come so far, so close at last to the mysteries I had secretly dreamed of and which morality forbade. I no longer knew whether I stood on the verge of a scandal or a wonderful adventure.

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  Wearily, however, the pharmacist returned to tell me that my benefactor was going to see me, that he even wanted to see me and had important matters to discuss with me. This was an untimely development; it had been a foolish idea of mine to come on this visit just before the scheduled ceremony. But I would never have dared disturb the pharmacist and my benefactor a third time; so, to overcome my impatience, I began to think of the ceremony and of how, in a short while, I would answer the principal of our high school and perhaps even our Director of Public Education. They would both congratulate me in public, that was certain. But was I expected to reply to them and to express my thanks? Yes, I would have to do it, I would utter a few words before the assembled crowd of parents and representatives of the press. I supposed there would be journalists present, so I made up a nice emphatic-sounding statement that would be impressive and subtle, full of various meanings, promising that this prize, a landmark in my life, would also mark the end of the first stage in my pursuit along the road that leads to wisdom. The whole crowded hall would then applaud while I went up to collect my prize on the platform, where all the official personalities sat. The principal and the Director of Public Education would shake my hand, but I would be in no hurry, no longer paralyzed by my own timidity, since all of this was really owed me. So I tried to formulate my brief reply and to give it the proper rhythm, but my anxiety, as time went by and the customers of the store constantly came and went, prevented me from remaining among the rosy-colored clouds of my imagined triumph. Finally I came to a heroic decision and approached the pharmacist as he was gluing a label onto a bottle; I asked him to express my apologies to Monsieur Bismuth because I had to leave at once, but that I would be able to come back later in the evening, around six o’clock, or the following morning at eleven. He stared at me, obviously surprised by my nervousness and annoyed at having been disturbed so frequently as well as by my apparently independent attitude toward his boss.

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  It was Mimouni who gave me the idea of it, confiding in me his intention of attending mass. They seemed to be having fun there, and at least one went through the village on the way to mass. Although he seemed pretty sure of himself, he was anxious at heart and asked me to accompany him because he hoped, thanks to my approval, to gain some assurance. I hesitated, not that I felt impelled to refuse on doctrinal grounds, but because his whole proposal struck me as preposterous. I was associating daily with Christians for the first time in my life, and they aroused in me neither fear nor antagonism; they even enjoyed, in my eyes, the prestige of all Europeans, members of a very powerful sect. But we quite obviously belonged to two entirely different worlds, and nothing could be more alien to me than the idea of entering one of their churches such as I had seen in the course of my Sabbath walks, when I had furtively caught sight of red draperies and of mysterious lights. But Mimouni made fun of my timidity and told me that Christian tourists often visited the old synagogue in his part of town: the faithful always received them well and loaned them caps so that they might enter it without committing any sacrilege. It would only be proper that we be equally well received. I finally yielded, not so much in the face of his arguments as because I felt impelled to bring some interruption to the rhythm of our week. Immediately, I began to await Sunday with impatience.